The Captor
by Daystar Searcher
Summary: Occupation AU: Odo's Cardassian superiors gift him the young terrorist Kira to do with as he pleases; he accepts in order to save her life. But he doesn't want her. In any sense of the word. Written for Dark Fest 2011.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or any of its characters. I do not profit from this writing.**

The prisoner was five foot eight, somewhat tall for a female, fine-boned. Clearly suffering from malnutrition, but the musculature was well-defined. Red hair, brown eyes. Extent of calluses and scars along the hands suggested a history of hard labor long before her induction into the terrorist movement.

He didn't want her.

In any sense of the word.

The Cardassian guards finished securing her. The chains were long enough to permit her to walk from the bed to the bathroom. The guards moved cautiously; one had already been sent to the infirmary with a broken wrist, and a second had barely avoided having his knee shattered. As soon as their task was done, they left, barely waiting for his permission even though they were technically under his command.

Under his command. His men. Uniforms. It was all so new.

He remembered Dukat's reptilian smile, hands spread expansively as if they too were somehow leering. _Oh, and Odo...if you should need any advice in, ah…taming her…_

He watched the prisoner. Her eyes were wide and lit with fire, wild and animal. But beneath that, ice. Logistics, planning. Him, the room, her restraints—she'd already taken them in, lightning fast, mapped out mental blueprints. Their weak points, structural flaws, potential angles of attack. The prisoner was intelligent. But he knew that already.

"What are you waiting for, Shifter?" Kira Nerys spat.

Odo wondered if it was genetic, how every Bajoran knew to say 'shifter' with exactly that inflection, that rough hissed blend of disgust and derision. How each and every one of them managed to replicate that exact sneer.

Out loud he said, "Waiting?"

"A pretty girl like you," she sing-songed his own words from before back at him, her mouth twisted in a mocking smile that looked as though it hurt to make.

Odo felt the slipping sensation of some of his internal organs liquefying; his concentration always weakened when he got flustered. It wasn't his fault he'd gotten the protocol wrong, it wasn't his fault that Dr. Mora's collection of Earth literature had been less than accurate, or appropriate to the situation. It wasn't.

He clenched his fists. _Solid,_ he willed. _Solid._

He made his voice as cold and dry as he could, pictured his throat a desert on the moon. "I have no interest in your undignified humanoid mating rituals."

She barked a laugh. "Then why am I here?"

"Because you killed a man. And because Gul Dukat has…" he hesitated. He hadn't had time to check the room for surveillances devices. "A…unique sense of humor. It amused him to give you to me."

"As a comfort woman," she snapped, a challenge. Daring him to deny it.

Odo remembered the way she had looked at him when he first sat down next to her on the Promenade. Wary, but not skittish. Limbs held at alert, but subtly so. She had small, delicate-looking hands, even if they were callused, and she had gripped the bowl of soup only a fraction tighter than necessary when she saw his unformed face.

"If I didn't agree, you would have been executed," he told her.

"What's it to you if a terrorist dies? I'd think that'd make your job easier, Constable."

She spit that word too, the same way she'd spit 'Shifter.' Not the way she'd said it the first time, when she'd made her partial, false confession. Her voice was harsh and high and grating now, angry. He wondered if it hurt, to make that voice. To set her jaw that tight, her eyes that hard.

So much about humanoids he didn't know.

"I'm not going to let someone die if I can help it," he said gruffly, looking away, at the wall. It was beige."Even a killer."

"I'm supposed to believe you're getting nothing out of this arrangement?" Derision dripped from every syllable.

Odo hesitated. He was impartial. He was honest. He was. And he had not asked Gul Dukat for it, had not even hinted at wanting it, had only accepted it because _she_would need it, not him… "Believe what you like."

But she had seen him pause. She was on him like a hara cat. "What is it? What's the going price for loyalty these days?"

His head snapped up. "It wasn't like that!"

"Touchy, Shifter. What was it? Gold-pressed latinum? A promotion? Just the joy of having someone tied up and in your power?"

"No!" The word burst out of his mouth, and he could feel the others following. "Quarters. He gave me quarters, this—these rooms."

Her mouth hung open a little, her forehead creased. She hadn't been expecting that.

"I've…I've never had quarters before," Odo heard himself explaining, the words stuttering out of their own accord, compulsive, like the rote language lessons with Doctor Mora. "Just—a closet, or a corner, for my buc—I've never had quarters." _Solid. Solid. Get rid of the sheen on the backs of your hands._"But that's not why I agreed to it." He hazarded looking into her eyes, willing her to understand. She had very well-formed eyes. He'd always been good at making eyes. "I just needed a place to put you. I didn't want you to die."

She started to laugh, then, pealing, ringing, and he hated that sound, he hated the way it cut into him, the way all Bajorans seemed to laugh in the exact same rejoicing rhythm of _better than you, better than you, always, always better than you_—"Quarters?" she choked out. "Most collaborators hold out for riches and he got you for two dusty rooms in the most out-of-the-way corner of the whole Prophets-damned station—"

"He did not 'get' me. I am not a collaborator. I am here to maintain order."

Kira just laughed harder. It turned into a hacking sound. He wondered if it hurt. He hoped that it did. He reminded himself not to hope that it did.

"I looked up Bajoran nutritional requirements," he said. "I can bring you hasperat and moba fruit if you are hungry."

The prisoner's laughter died down, her mouth making a grim twist. Was she going to be ill? So much he didn't understand about humanoid digestive systems. "And a jumja stick if I'm good?"

"Perhaps," he said, puzzled. "Do you like jumja? I've heard the replicators make a passable substitute."

She turned away from him. The muscles of her back were tight under her shirt, tensed. The set of her shoulders radiated contempt. Scorn. Dismissing him as a threat but not accepting him as an equal. "If you think I'm going to lie back and spread my legs for a few creature comforts—

"I have told you, I have no desire to partake in your humanoid mating rituals," he snapped. "They are sordid, and vile, and disgusting, and—" She was looking at him again, now, over her shoulder, her head tilted. Her eyes were bright and sharp and measuring, and for a moment he wished keenly that he had not stopped the guard from kicking her after she had broken his wrist. If he hadn't then she would be in too much pain to be looking at him this way, as if she could bore right down into him and see everything.

He shoved the thought away, found himself backing towards the door. Stilled and forced himself to meet her eyes for an excruciating five seconds. "I'll bring you food in the morning."

The prisoner just kept looking.

xxxxx

In the morning he brought the prisoner three kava rolls, a large bowl of milaberries, and a pitcher of water.

Her eyes darted towards the door when he entered, but then she looked pointedly away. She had slept on top of the covers, if she had slept at all. Her position gave her the fullest view of the room.

"I won't be back until evening. This will have to last you all day. If you need more, now would be the time to tell me."

The prisoner did not respond.

"You're only inconveniencing yourself." He set the plates down on the side table where she could reach it. Choosing the food had been a more complicated procedure than he had imagined. Not wanting a repeat of last night's insinuations, he had avoided any of the sweeter dishes that the prisoner apparently believed constituted a bribe. He had briefly considered Pyrellian ginger tea as a goodwill gesture, but had dismissed it for similar reasons as he had all jumja products and tuwaly pie.

He stood back, waited to see if she would respond.

She continued to ignore him with her eyes, though he could tell by the tightening of her shoulders that she was acutely aware of his position in the room.

Odo left the room, and returned with a stack of Earth detective novels, printed on actual paper rather than PADDs. He didn't trust the terrorist with anything more technologically advanced than a spoon, and even that was probably pushing it.

She blinked at the thud of the books hitting the side table's surface.

"_Try_not to destroy these," he said dryly, knowing as he said the words that they all but guaranteed the books' destruction. Well, at least the prisoner would be entertained. "They are, I am told, rather rare."

Still no response. But it was no cause for worry. Her respiration appeared normal. She was suffering no obvious injuries. Odo had yet to encounter a healthy humanoid not in love with the sound of his or her own voice; sooner or later, the prisoner would respond.

xxxxx

It was evening. Later than he had planned, by thirty-five minutes. He did not like being off schedule.

When he had been here long enough, he would have his security operations run like clockwork. He would organize the files and refuse to accept bribes and treat every criminal exactly the same.

He would bring justice, and honesty, and clarity.

He looked in on the prisoner. She had shifted position slightly, but other than that the room remained unchanged. She did not even blink, this time, when he entered.

"You should eat," he said.

No response.

"You should at least drink. Humanoids can survive for a time without eating, but you need liquid."

Nothing.

"I'm not going to try to touch you."

She might as well have been stone.

xxxxx

The next morning he brought her hasperat, tuwaly pie, another jug of water, and a mug of raktajino. Her nostrils flared—he assumed due to the raktajino. He was told the Klingon coffee was intensely aromatic. He had chosen it precisely for that reason, after staying up an hour past his regeneration point to read scientific studies on appetite and hunger.

"I brought different things today."

Kira Nerys didn't look at him.

"You should eat them."

He took the old dishes away, put them in the recycler. Returned.

Her red hair had begun to frizz, and come loose from the braid. It stuck to the right side of her face—she must have fallen asleep on that side last night.

At least she was sleeping. Humanoids needed sleep.

"You're going to die if you don't eat something."

He said it to provoke her, bring forth another insult, another argument.

Her eyes stayed dull and unfocused away from him, not flashing.

xxxxx

All day, at different points throughout his duties, he watched Bajorans eating in the ghetto. Thin soup, mostly—they slurped it down, noises like a malfunctioning Waste Extraction pipe. Scraped the bowl with their spoons. Broke out into fist fights over a second serving.

The children with their big eyes and distended empty stomachs hid from him while he broke up the fights, and then, when they could slip away from their mothers, followed him until he left the ghetto, their little heads peering around corners and through gratings.

Odo wondered if they liked jumja.

xxxxx

He brought her jumja sticks and jumja tea and Pyrellian ginger tea extra-hot, and she still wouldn't even look at him.

"Please eat."

He couldn't remember what position she had been in when he left. Had she moved at all?

"Kira—please. I'm not—I don't—"

He hadn't meant to use her name. Was this a ploy to trick him into using her name? He didn't have any words. He had never been good at words. She sat not looking at him, her weak shallow breaths barely lifting her rib cage, her eyes unfocused, _and he couldn't figure out the words—_

"Why are you doing this?"

xxxxx

By checking the service logs during his sweep of the quarters for surveillance equipment, Odo figured out that she must be drinking the water from the bathroom. That was something. At least she wouldn't die from that.

He let go of his form and pressed against the door, the sounds of the room amplified through every cell. He could hear every breath she took. He could hear every beat of her heart.

He could hear every shift, however slight, on the soft Bajoran cotton.

She had water. She wasn't going to die from not having enough water.

Did it hurt, though, to only have water? How did it hurt, if it did? Was it like when he stayed solid past his regeneration point, when he felt as though every piece of him was straining to pull apart? Was it like when Doctor Mora shocked him to induce him to shape-shift, that sharp and burning sensation?

Thud-thud, thud—breath. Thud, thud-thud, breath. Still there.

Was it a hollow, cold feeling, like sitting alone on the Promenade pretending to drink tea?

So much about humanoids he didn't understand.

xxxxx

"Please eat."

"Please."

"I know that you…I know that you hate me. I know that. You're not proving anything with this behavior."

"I—I acted out too, in…in captivity. I tried to punish the…the scientists. It didn't work. It doesn't work, it won't—"

"Very well. You're only hurting yourself."

xxxxx

His bucket fit neatly in the far left corner of the room. He was regenerating in his bucket when he heard it. A slight scraping.

Then a clink.

He drew up out of the bucket, head–torso-arms-legs-hands-feet-complete, and padded soundlessly to the prisoner's door.

Another clink, louder. Yes, definitely from in there.

He heard her footsteps. Her gait was sure, without a hint of the unsteadiness that should have accompanied her extended food-deprivation. The touch of her feet to the carpet was soft, barely a brush of sound. She was moving like a hara cat, a predator's walk.

The door slid open, and the prisoner stepped through. The low lights glinted off a sharpened piece of metal in her hand; most probably a bent portion of one of her manacles. That would have taken a great deal of persistence.

"That's not going to work on me," he told her.

She wheeled, her hand a blur, the shiv on a straight and true path to his heart. He let his entire torso go liquid, and resolidified it as the makeshift blade came out through his back, catching her wrist tight. She jerked backwards, her eyes so wide the white of them was blinding. He could feel the rush of her blood through her veins. She was breathing fast, rough, ragged.

He shook his head. "I told you that wasn't going to work on me."

Her eyes darted left, right, up, down—no escape.

Odo took hold of her arm and pulled it from his chest, shifting his hands into handcuffs around both her wrists as he did so. The prisoner flinched at the touch of his hands. She did not flinch when her hand was pulled from him. She did not breathe a sigh of relief when her fingers were no longer frozen inside him.

No, Kira Nerys just watched him, alert-afraid, defiant. Shoulders hunched ever so slightly to ward off a blow to the face, stomach tensed to limit the damage to a punch or kick there.

Odo'ital knew that pose.

He ordered new cuffs and chains out of the replicator, and secured her to the bed once more. Then he took her food away.

Five minutes later, he returned to her room with hasperat, steamed asna, and a small bowl of alvas. He set it down next to her on the bed. "If you're planning to kill me and escape, you should build up your strength."

She looked up sharply at him. He willed his face blank, expressionless. A piece of sculpted sandstone.

"How do I know it's not poisoned?" she asked. Not angry. Genuinely curious. Or at least it seemed like it. Her voice was soft again, like it had been when they first met. Eyes still wary.

"Would you like to watch me order it from the replicator?"

She appeared to consider it for a moment, and then shook her head. Reached out for an alva, her movements light and sharp, like a bird plucking a seed. Odo imagined her as a bird, red-feathered. She popped the fruit into her mouth and chewed. Gave a slight grimace. "I'll go with a leap of faith."

xxxxx

"You didn't finish." Only a few spoonfuls of asna taken, and the entire hasperat untouched.

"You can't eat a lot of food fast if you haven't been eating for awhile. It makes you sick." She was looking at him like he was a puzzle piece, the way he sometimes looked at an associate of Quark's whose shady side business he hadn't quite figured out yet. The detective novel in her lap was held open to page fifty-three.

What was he going to do when she finished reading them? What did humanoids do besides eat and drink and talk and try to thwart the law?

"Are you giving me back to the spoonheads?" she asked.

Odo shook himself from his reverie. He would figure something out. "Of course not." He decided to try for a small smile. It was one of his better facial expressions. "How are you supposed to figure out how to kill me without practice?"

xxxxx

"And may the Prophets bless us and guide us—" The prisoner broke off mid-chant as Odo entered. She must have tried to wash her clothing in the sink; the bloodstains and char marks were still evident, but it was wrinkled as though it had been air-dried, and a few still-damp patches clung to the stark outline of her ribs.

"Don't let me disturb you," he said dryly, seating himself in the far corner with a stack of PADDs.

"What are you doing here?" Blunt. There was an honesty to her speech. No hiding behind words.

Odo snorted. "You seem determined to break out. I see no point in making it easy for you." He raised his eyes from the weekly crime report to meet her gaze. Arched what passed for one of his eyebrows. "I'm not _actually_suicidal."

There was the tiniest hint of a tug at the corner of her mouth, involuntary. She thinned her lips, crossed her arms. "So you're just going to sit there and watch me?"

"While working on minor station business, yes." He gestured towards the light fixture she'd been chanting at. Didn't bother to keep the edge of mockery out of his voice. "Please…carry on."

"No thank you." She made the words sound like a whip lash. She turned away from him and began to do push-ups on the floor instead. The chains clinked each time she went down. The muscles in her back and shoulders rippled, made new and changing shapes.

xxxxx

"Why'd you get this?"

It was a question Odo had put to himself more than once over the last week. The first merchant he had contacted had turned pale and babbled frantically that he didn't have any in stock, had never had any in stock, wasn't much call for them, and they certainly didn't want to displease their benevolent Cardassian overlords with a lot of silly superstition, so very sorry he couldn't be of assistance... The story had been the same with the second, and third, and fourth, until Odo had finally informed the fifth that if he wasn't told where he could purchase a Bajoran prayer mandala, he'd be conducting important security sweeps of the cargo hold for the next four hours, during which the businessman's shipment of Aldebaran lily blossoms would wilt beyond all recoverable value.

It had turned out that the merchant hadn't had any prayer mandalas. No one did. No one carried an item only in demand by penniless refugees and slaves.

But the merchant had suggested he ask the other Cardassians' comfort women, who had been…disconcerting, but helpful.

Out loud Odo answered the prisoner, "I have an obligation to maintain your quality of life." He harrumphed. "Whatever my personal feelings on it, prayer is important to most Bajorans."

The prisoner eyed the mandala with a look Odo recognized as naked avarice. Humanoids. So predictable.

But then a few muscles in her face tightened, and now she was looking at it as though it might bite her.

Her hand stole forward, almost of its own accord, and hovered a few inches above the smooth, clean-lined surface.

She met his eyes. "I'll need privacy to pray."

He crossed his arms. He should have expected this gambit. "How long?"

"Half an hour."

He had been expecting her to ask for longer, to milk the excuse and try to bargain him down to whatever time she actually wanted. His surprise must have shown on his face, Dr. Mora's emotion-expression association exercises breaking through as always when least welcome, because she shrugged. Almost—but not quite, never quite—apologetic. "I really am planning on just praying."

"You'll excuse me if _I_don't take that on faith."

"I'm still planning on killing you," she told him, chin set firm and high. "Just not during the time I set aside to honor the Prophets."

"Well." He crossed his arms tighter. "I appreciate the honesty."

She regarded him for a long moment.

"Funny thing, Constable, I think you actually do."

xxxxx

He got the alert that his personal computer terminal had been breached at 1400 hours. He set off at a brisk clip for his quarters, but it was already too late.

It had been an incredibly stupid error on his part, of course. He had layered security protocol upon security protocol on the computer terminal in her room to prevent her from accessing the files he stored in the quarters' main data bank, not thinking that while the prisoner had neither the temperament nor the training to jerry-rig a remote hacking device out of a spoon and a 1950s Earth Mickey Spillane novel, she had _precisely_the temperament and training to wrench off a bedpost and bash in the computer screen, and then reach through and pull out the data in microchip form. Which, thanks to some Cardassian computing genius, she'd be able to ask the screen-less computer to scan and render in audio instead.

She was waiting for him, sitting on the edge of the bed facing the door. Legs crossed, arms folded. Head cocked slightly to the side. "Ninety percent of your monthly salary goes to a smuggler."

"Alleged smuggler," he corrected. "Davran Sahdoc has never been involved in any suspicious activity within my jurisdiction."

She raised an eyebrow. "That's a very convenient and thin line you're walking."

"And he's never been accused of running weapons."

"I noticed. Just food and medical supplies."

"I don't need money for myself. And I only need a little for you."

She was looking at him like he was a riddle written in a language she only half-understood. "You have to pick a side eventually, Constable."

Did she really not see? How was it possible to look at his face and not see? "My side was chosen for me. I'm the only one on it."

xxxxx

"Why do you work for the Cardassians?"

"I don't work for them." Not snapped this time. Weary, his mouth tired of forcing out the same syllables in response to the same question each day, differently worded. "I work for justice."

"Under the Cardassians."

"Yes. And with them. And with Bajorans, too, when I can find one that's not intent on blowing up everything in sight."

They were sitting cross-legged, facing towards each other from opposite sides of the room, weekly crime report and detective novel forgotten.

"We're trying to bring about justice too."

"With explosions? And how is that working for you so far?"

"How are death camps working for you and the spoonheads?"

"I try not to send people to the death camps."

"That's true." A pause. "You just send them to the labor camps. Where it takes them a whole extra week to die."

"I do what I can," he said gruffly. He looked back down at the PADD in his hand, jabbed a finger unnecessarily hard at it. "I can't save everyone."

"So you can just settle for bargaining Gul Dukat down from executions to life-sentences for pick-pockets. While thousands of Bajorans are being slaughtered each day."

"I suppose you think I should join the Resistance."

"Why not?"

"_Why not_? What have Bajorans done for me? How have Bajorans proved any better than Cardassians? He might have reported to Cardassians, but it was a Bajoran scientist who ran the lab where I—"

He stopped, shook his head as if he could shake the image out of it, lose the shape of the memory.

"The lab where you what?"

"Nothing."

It was a pity she was a terrorist; he could have used an interrogator like her.

She was far too good at getting him to say things.

xxxxx

The skin around her wrists was chafed and in need of a dermal regenator, and the keys were back in his office, so he shifted one in the palm of his hand. She bolted, of course, the second she was let loose, and so Odo had to lasso her with an elongated liquid arm. He let out a long-suffering sigh for her benefit as he reeled her back in. "I am a _policeman_. A little respect for my deductive capabilities would be nice."

She called him something very rude, and surprisingly original. But she stopped struggling against his grasp as he ran the dermal regenerator over her raw skin. Twisted her free arm at the elbow to reach up and brush the tips of her fingers through the golden surface of his substance. The tips of her fingers were covered in infinitely detailed swirls, and very cold.

He flinched away from her. "Don't touch me."

"Shift into something," she demanded.

He refused to look up from his work. "It's not a party trick." _Anymore._

"I heard stories. About what you used to do with the neck ridges."

He moved his efforts to her other wrist.

"Did you ever try a Bajoran nose?"

"I tried." Clipped, curt. "Failed, as you can see."

"It can't be that much harder than a Cardassian neck."

His grip on her wrist tightened a bit too much. He could feel her bones. Bajorans had a sturdy skeletal system. "Nevertheless, I can't."

_Dr. Mora, imperious, impassive, refusing to let him return to the sample container to regenerate: "It's a simple cartilaginous structure, Odo, there's no reason for your consistent failure—" and he hates Mora and he hates the nose and he needs to regenerate, he is going dry out and crumble into a billion tiny agonized screaming dying grains of sand—_

"Why don't you just take a Cardassian form, then?"

Odo put the dermal tool away and replaced her handcuffs. It was possible that he cinched them a little tighter than he had to. "I don't want to be a Cardassian. I don't want to be a Bajoran. I want to be who I am, which is me." _And do what both of you cannot._

He expected a return to her favorite subject of how everything he believed he was, was in fact a lie, but when he looked up she was watching the golden glow of his morph fade back into his skin and the dull fabric of his simulated clothing.

"You're the exact color of the sun," said the combat-hardened terrorist, and for a moment she looked so very young. He had never been good at estimating humanoids' ages. "Did you know that? The exact color of the sun, setting over the mountains in Dakhur province."

xxxxx

"Ah, Odo." Gul Dukat had a voice like silk over steel. "So good of you to stop by and see me."

A stiff nod. "You ordered me to."

Dukat gave that rich, throaty chuckle that Odo suspected he practiced in front of a mirror. "Oh, I wouldn't presume to order you around, Odo. How could I? You're our impartial, objective observer."

Laughter made Cardassians stretch their necks slightly, revealing the weak points between the scales where sufficient force could sink a blade and sever an artery. Odo reminded himself not to stare at the places where one could sever an artery. "You had something you wanted to discuss, Dukat?"

A slight twitch at the omission of his title, angry, which gave Odo a certain warm pleasurable feeling for a few moments. Then it was gone, in its place a genial leer that the gul was apparently under the impression made him look suave. How could such a vain humanoid have no idea how he presented himself? "I've been looking over the weekly incident reports. You've brought petty crime down nearly thirty percent. Very impressive."

"You could have told me that over the comm," Odo said testily. "I've got officers to drill, and there's a drunk and disorderly charge against the Ferengi—"

"Oh, Quark will be getting out of that one too," Dukat informed him airily, as if that statement hadn't just trampled over the basic founding principles of everything Odo was trying to do on Terok Nor. "If you must insist on neglecting the fine art of small talk, then we can skip straight to the point. A rather personal matter, which I'm sure you wouldn't want me to air over the comm system, where anyone might overhear—"

"You mentioned something about getting to the point?"

"Oh, Odo!" Dukat threw back his head and roared laughter. But Odo saw his fist clench tighter where it rested on the edge of the table. He was pushing the limits of the insubordination the gul would find amusing. "I simply wanted to acquire how things were going with…my gift to you."

_Solid. Solid. Your face is granite._

"The prisoner is healthy."

"Good, good," Gul Dukat said, with about as much interest as if Odo had told him the chemical composition of milaberries, waving his hand as if to brush away the words. "She hasn't been…giving you any trouble, has she? Needed to put her in her place at all?" A leer crept into the corners of his mouth. The man could make anything an insinuation.

"We have an understanding," Odo said.

Dukat waited for a moment, head tilted towards Odo with wide and expectant eyes, perhaps waiting for him to spill details of his subjugation methods. When none were forthcoming: "Tell me, Odo…does it excite you? Perhaps not even sexually, but all the same—to see her each morning, yours and yours alone, unable to run from that rather pitiable approximation of a face you wear?"

Odo crossed his arms; a tell, he knew, from the flash of triumph on Dukat's face—damn Mora's associational training. "I can't imagine how you think that's any of your business."

"I'm merely taking an interest, Odo." The gul was all smiles. "I know you're not experienced in these matters. But if you'd rather not discuss it, well—say no more! You can return to your duties now."

Odo nodded and turned, anticipating it, and sure enough just as he reached the door it came: "Meru tells me you got her a prayer mandala."

He didn't turn back. "Is that a problem?"

"Of course not." Cheerful, friendly, amiable. Odo imagined the fanged smile of an Andorian ice crocodile. "Just…keeping appraised of you, and her, and…the situation. Wouldn't want anything to get out of control."

xxxxx

"You don't believe in the Prophets!"

"If that surprises you, you must be the most naïve terrorist in the entire Shakaar cell. Possibly the entire Resistance."

"I thought you were just angry at them. I didn't think you were a _nonbeliever—"_

"Are you concerned for my soul?" he asked dryly. "Trying to make sure I get into the Celestial Temple after you murder me?"

"But how can you—every Bajoran—"

"As you've noted on more than one occasion, I'm not a Bajoran."

"Don't you believe in _anything_?" Her voice soared on the last word, incredulous.

He sighed, purely an affectation but he was beginning to see the appeal it held for humanoids. "I believe that Bajor rotates around the sun. I believe that two plus two equals four, and that there is no scheme too underhanded for Quark to have a hand in. I believe that a properly constructed mining shaft—"

The prisoner was shaking her head. "No, no, I mean—something bigger than yourself. Don't you believe in anything—anything beyond? Anything…more?"

Her forehead was pressed into a frown, two lines wrinkling the skin parallel to her nose ridges. Her eyes were wide and impassioned and the most Bajoran of any eyes he had ever seen.

"Justice," he said. "I believe in justice."

He expected her to laugh, in that hard/hurting way she had whenever he said something she thought was dangerously stupid, or in that pealing chorus of superiority. But she just looked thoughtful, and then nodded. "That's good. It's not the Prophets, but it's something." Her mouth didn't quite make the shape of a smile, but she looked satisfied. The way she looked satisfied made a warm squirming feeling inside him. "It's good that you have that."

xxxxx

"The sun was setting when I got there, and I almost couldn't breathe for the ash the wind had kicked up." Her eyes were far away, watching events that took place years ago. "They had burned down his garden. He loved that garden. More than anything, he loved it. He'd planted seeds there he'd kept hidden through three refugee camps, heirloom seeds passed down through generations. He loved that garden, and he died in it, with my brothers, all of them trying to protect it. I wasn't there.

"The sun was setting when I got there, and there wasn't a spot of green left. Just grey, and the red of the embers. Even my father was grey and red. Ashes and burnt skin. And my brothers. They were the same.

"By the time I buried them, it was dark, and I had to make it back to camp before we moved the next morning so I was careless. Moving too fast, too loud. I heard a twig snap, and I turned, and I fired—

"It was a hara cat. An old one. Barely any teeth left. And I got this idea—it was ridiculous. But I got this idea that I should bury it. Which was how the Cardassian foot patrol that had been tracking me caught up to me before I got back to camp. They raped me. I strangled three of them with twine while they were asleep, and when the fourth one woke up I hacked his face open with my father's hand hoe."

The last two sentences were related as if describing the weather.

"And that was the first time I killed anyone."

Kira stayed staring at the wall, beyond the wall. Odo held as still as he could. He could feel her words hanging in the air, their solid invisible forms, and if he moved they would clatter and chime against each other and explode.

He could feel the weight of her words in his hands, heavy and fragile at the same time. A gift.  
"How did I get there from you asking about when I joined the Resistance?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said.

She looked down at her hands. Ran the fingers of her right over the palm of her left. "You're a good listener." Her fingernails bit into the skin. "Too good."

xxxxx

It was an ordinary evening. They had ordinary evenings now. There was a schedule, and a routine, and things he knew to expect. And that was the only reason he looked forward to these evenings now. Their predictability.

He was sitting in his corner, though further out in the room than he used to. He was writing a report.

Kira was perched on the edge of the bed. She was watching him.

"Do you want to touch me?" she asked.

He dropped the PADD, picked it up and fumbled it again, the hard plastic slippery against his fingers, slipping against the carpet, his mind was whirring blur. "I told you, I—I have no need for humanoid mating rituals."

"I know," she said. "And I know you don't like to be touched. I remember. I wasn't asking that. I was asking if _you_ wanted to touch _me."_

He looked up at her. She wasn't laughing at him. Her face was small and heart-shaped. Her hair looked soft. She was looking down at him, and her mouth was closed (a small red shape, redder than her hair) and her eyes were deep and dark and she wasn't laughing at him, at all.

"I don't know."

The words came out of his throat rough and weak at the same time, and it took a second for him to realize he had made them.

Kira nodded, slowly. "Do you want to try?"

The air seemed somehow thicker as he stood, walked to her. Extended his arm. Laid his hand on the skin at the inside of her elbow. He felt the fine hairs scattered there, the softness of her skin broken by the faint jagged line of a scar. He could feel the coil of Nerys' muscle beneath that skin, and the thundering drum of her pulse, her blood almost burning.

He felt the pulse speed up a fraction of a second before her other arm snapped up, landing a direct blow to the side of his head. Odo staggered backwards, losing his balance and tumbling to the floor. She started towards him, but three quick rolls and he collapsed out of her range, stunned and the world spinning.

"So you can be hurt."

"When I'm caught unawares, with, with my humanoid organs intact. But not killed." He made his way to a sitting position, tried to order the arrangement of his muscles and nervous system. Why had he told her that? He shouldn't have told her that. The room wouldn't hold still.

Kira crouched down as close as she could get to him. "You would have owed me," she said. "If I let you touch me with no consequences. You wouldn't have wanted that."

"How kind of you to look out for me," Odo muttered, holding his head.

"You know it's true."

He remembered something she had said to him—it seemed so long ago now. Words were important to humanoids. They bonded through words. They knew each other through them. She would remember.

"Funny thing," he said, "I believe I do."

xxxxx

It was an ordinary morning where he brought her food, and then she smiled at him in a way that lit up her whole face and changed it into a shape he had never seen.

He tried to find a word for it all day, sitting in his office, breaking up fights at Quark's, planning an infiltration of a smuggling ring. Not continuously, but at certain unexpected moments, he saw it, and he tried to find words for the way it was new and different. Was it the amount of teeth on view? Was it the angle of her head? Was it the speed, the quick dizzy flash of it?

And then—

_"Shifter,"_the drunken Bajoran sneered, weaving on his feet. A knife in his hand keeping the Cardassian guards at bay; Odo had ordered them not to shoot. "All high and mighty, but g'one of us up in yer rooms, keepin' her all locked up, whatcha doin' t'yer pretty girl, Shifter?"

And he saw Kira Nery's smile, and he saw the other Bajorans clustered at a distance, not smiling.

And then—

"Don't worry, sir," Glemy told him later. Odo approved of Glemy. He was an idiot, but he followed Odo's orders and wasn't actively taking bribes.

"Worry? About what?"

"The Bajorans, sir." The young Cardassian's face was disconcertingly open, no tensing of the muscular structure whatsoever. The most exertion it got was a smile. "I've had surveillance duty all week, and the chatter I've picked up suggests most of them know she volunteered for the position. They know she's not a victim here."

Glemy's brilliant grin seemed to expand to fill Odo's entire vision, and he remembered the crumpled shape of the body of a comfort woman whom a group of Bajorans had cornered alone. He remembered the pattern of blood along the bulkhead, the radiating spray, the angle of the dried droplets. Bajorans had so much blood inside them, and it was so red.

He thought of Nerys' smile again, and knew what he had to do.

xxxxx

"What the hell, Odo?" Kira said, looking around the deserted docking station. He watched the way she tensed her shoulders, glanced swiftly towards all dark corners. He memorized the spot where she bit her lip. _This is the first time you've ever said my name._

"That ship is leaving here in thirty minutes." He was pleased with his ability to keep his voice brisk and clipped. It was almost like shapeshifting, like he was someone else right now. "I took readings on the hold and it has sufficient oxygen for you until Davran sets down in Dakhur province. You should get into it immediately."

Her face was frozen, mouth slightly open, as if she had forgotten how to make facial expressions. "I don't understand. You're…you're helping me escape?"

"I cannot be objective with you here, or be seen as objective. I cannot be trusted by either Bajorans or Cardassians. And there is no other way to get rid of you and maintain that objectivity."

She stepped towards him, shaking her head, forehead creased. "You'll get in trouble."

"Gul Dukat will have a hard time finding evidence." He allowed himself a smile. It didn't feel quite right on his face. "I'm not Chief of Security for nothing."

"He won't need evidence to get you in trouble," she insisted. Why wouldn't she go? What was she waiting for?

"I can take care of myself."

He counted the seconds she remained silent, and there were seven of them. Then she nodded, sharp, sure. Kira Nerys knew how to make a quick decision and stick to it.

-except that just as she turned towards the ship, she wheeled back to face him. Her lips worked soundlessly, and then: "You know that if I see you again—by that time I'll have figured out a way to kill you."

She was trembling. Was she cold? The temperature here was station-normal, more than sufficient for Bajorans. "I would expect nothing less."

Nerys blinked rapidly. There was so little light in the docking ring, but her eyes were shining. Was there too much dust here, irritating her eyes?

She stepped up close to him, and made a motion as if to touch his face. He flinched, and she bit her lip again and moved her hand downward, towards his arm but not quite touching. Less than an inch. He could feel the warmth radiating off her palm.

"You're a…a very singular man, Constable."

She turned and disappeared into the hold of the ship.

Odo thought of the empty room he had just taken her from, the bed holding the impression of her body, the Raymond Chandler book dog-eared to page ninety-three. A trail of tiny kava crumbs along the carpet, and a broken computer screen.

He thought of leaving the room after the missing persons case had been marked 'Unresolved;' leaving a room vacuumed of kava crumbs and with all the bedding straightened.

He thought of the supply closet in his security office where he would take his bucket to from the empty room, and where he would go back to regenerating in from now on.

"Singular," he said to the air. "Yes. I suppose I am."


End file.
